Serena was quiet for a moment. ‘So how do we divert the saboteurs’ bombs? Go out there and physically move them?’

‘Maybe,’ Agata replied. ‘But I don’t know how we can get out undetected.’

Serena was incredulous. ‘You think the Council will try to stop us protecting the mountain?’

‘Not as such – but if we’re going to tell them our plan, they’ll have known about it for the last three years. So why wouldn’t they have modified their own defences at the base to take account of what we tell them about the occulters and the explosives?’

Serena said, ‘Because we don’t tell them. Because we’re afraid that they’d find a way to prevent the explosions from causing the disruption – which would bring us back to a meteor as the cause.’ She put a hand over her eyes and massaged her temples. ‘Just when I’d stopped getting messages from myself, the future finds a new way to order me around.’

‘Has it told you how to get into the void unseen? Or do some of your army of waking sleepers happen to be airlock guards?’

‘No airlock guards,’ Serena replied, ‘but we have technicians capable of splicing photonic cables and disabling sensors.’

‘That’s not enough,’ Agata said ruefully. ‘There’ll be people at all the airlocks, from now to the disruption.’

Serena hummed angrily. ‘So do you believe we’re going to do this, or do you think we’re going to cower in our rooms and wait for whatever unfolds?’

‘I don’t know.’ Agata hadn’t been able to bring herself to reveal what Ramiro had told her about the inscription. The only certainty they had now was the disruption; there was no promise of any kind of triumph to follow.

‘Are you still working in the cooling tunnels?’ Serena asked.

‘No.’

‘But you’re familiar with the whole system?’

‘I’ve done the induction – it was fairly detailed. Why?’

Serena said, ‘Cooling air leaves the mountain – and there won’t be people guarding every vent. If my technician friends can disable the sensors, we can go out with the air and start looking for these bombs.’

Agata began buzzing softly. ‘You think they’ll let a mob of saboteurs congregate at an air vent? There are cameras in every corridor, there are people watching every move we make.’

‘Maybe your moves,’ Serena conceded. ‘The mere fact that you were on the Surveyor with the anti-messager Ramiro taints you a little. But who am I? Who are my friends? There aren’t enough people in the entire security department to watch everyone, and the software never got smart enough to take over the job. We’re not saboteurs, we’re not known dissidents. While they’re watching the usual suspects, all we have to do is avoid setting off the kind of alarms that can’t be ignored.’